Sunday, March 23, 2014

Harvey Fite and Opus 40, circa 1945

(This is believed to be the first article ever written about Opus 40. It's by Henry Morton Robinson, Harvey Fite's close friend and a major novelist of his time. We don't know where it originally appeared. There are a few minor errors -- Fite began his work in 1939, he taught full time at Bard -- but all in all, this is a fascinating look at Opus 40's early days.)

From an
abandoned stone-pile, an American sculptor is quarrying immortality.

by

Henry Morton
Robinson

Harvey Fite has a dream. Being a sculptor, his dream
naturally follows the contour of stone -- preferably American bluestone. He is
familiar, of course, with the classic sculptural materials -- Italian and
Belgian marbles carrying imported traditions of beauty and durability. But it
is bluestone, the native rock of Ulster County, that excites him most deeply,
and has sustained him in the gigantic task of building, single-handed, a modern
Acropolis at High Woods, New York.

Fite combines with his passion for sculpture a desire to
found an American craft colony. Two men have been his tutors: Hervey White,
pioneer idealist of Woodstock, and Thomas Hart Benton, the noted American
artist. From Hervey White, Fite learned the not-so-simple trick of living
virtually without money. From Thomas Hart Benton, he drew the inspiration of an
American Acropolis -- literally a "high citadel" in which sculpture
could be exhibited on an outdoor stage worthy of its permanence and grandeur.

The cornerstone (figuratively speaking) of Fite's Acropolis
is his ability to stretch tiny sums of money a long, long way. This ability is
not unique among artists. In Woodstock, as elsewhere, painters, poets and
sculptors all live very close to the ground. Instances of a man subsisting on $200
a year are not uncommon. Food, shelter, and clothing are reduced to bare levels
of simplicity. Corn-meal, lentils, home-grown vegetables and small game such as
rabbit and squirrels, are augmented in the summertime by fishing; sometimes a
few chickens are kept. Plumbing is unknown. Leaky roofs are patched with sod or
tar paper; fuel is obtained by cutting down trees and sawing them into
drumstove or fireplace lengths. Canvas paints and brushes make up the single
greatest item of expense in a Woodstock artist's life.

Fite's vision is as spacious as his life is simple. Always
he has despised dusty indoor museums run by fussy curators; it was his ambition
to build a platform on which the work of contemporary sculptors could be
exhibited in the sunlight against a backdrop of rugged mountains.

Harvey Fite had no capital but a pair of muscular hands and
two eyes which never ceased to search for the ideal pediment on which to base
his dream. Walking one day through a second-growth forest near the Hudson River
he found an abandoned bluestone quarry, a vast man-made gash in a terrain of
desolation. Actually, it was nothing more nor less than a dump, heaped high
with jagged rubble. But Fite saw the horizon of round-shouIdered Catskills
framing the quarry dump. “Here,” he said, I will cast my first stone."

The asking price was high: $325 for twelve acres of rock
that no one else wanted. He paid the owner $25 then and there; to earn the remaining
$300 he taught sculpture at Bard College, directly across the river. With
nothing short of immortaility in view, Fite began to clear his property in the
spring of 1940. Before he lifted the first stone he planned exactly what he
intended to do. In his own words he wanted “to create a sculptural landscape at
the foot of Mount Overlook." To accomplish this he lifted with his own hands
thousands of tons of bluestone rubble—not only lifted the jagged pieces, but
carried them distances up to 100 yards to fit them into his scheme. Pieces too
big to be lifted were either mounted on homemade wooden rollers or laboriously
broken by sledge hammer. It was a titanic operation that a traveling crane
might well have quailed at; Fite lost 30 pounds that first summer, but
developed, incidentally, the finest pair of shoulders in Ulster County. And in
the meantime he had transformed the chaos of rubble into a series of level
terraces which were to be the pedestals for individual pieces of sculpture; his
own, as well as the work of others.

Some of the local artists cocked a supercilious eyebrow, others
called him "bluestone crazy." A few mockers seeing him stripped to
the waist dubbed him Superman. But month in and year out Harvey Fite continued
to lift, cut, drag and chisel bluestone, until an enormous stage had been built
against the backdrop of pines and mountains.

Then, on that stage, he placed three gigantic statues of
bluestone, each a masterwork of the sculptor's art. The stone for these figures
had been quarried in huge blocks by hand, using tools that Fite had picked up
at local auctions. These figures each weigh upwards of a ton; the largest is 12
ft. high and weighs 6000 Ibs. They were lifted into place by a primitive but
ingenious "chain-and-tackle" -- an indispensable part of Fite's equipment.
The tripod of this hoisting mechanism consists of three enormous logs hewn from
Fite’s own trees; the chain and blocks were salvaged from his quarry dump. When
this contraption takes hold of a piece of stone it lifts! Fite swings a stone
into its desired position, then rests a ladder against the face of the stone
and begins to carve with chisel and mallet. A wealthy sculptor once presented
Fite with a pneumatic chisel, but after giving it a fair trial Fite cast it
aside as mechanical and unsatisfactory. He spends a great deal of his time restoring
the blunted edges of his chisels, sharpening them in a homemade forge and by
means of a foot-driven grindstone.

What was the allure of this stone that had so charmed the
young American sculptor? Well, in the first place it iss really a tough rock --
the toughest of all American stone says the Petographic Survey. Marble, that
classic of materials, begins to wear away under the caress of the elements
after 30 years. Limestone about the same. Granite, dubbed the "rock of
ages,” begins to crumble back to dust after 80 years. But bluestone, say
petrologic authorities, outlives man's ability to calculate its permanence.
It's natural bluish color modulates to weathered gray and silver as the years
pass. The only drawback to working with this ageless stone is the fearful
challenge it hurls at the sculptor. Says Fite, “The man who carves bluestone
must create a design of lasting dignity, or his work will live to mock him.”

Fite's first experience in carving a statue worthy of
standing against the huge spaces of mountain and sky, was somewhat
disillusioning. What had seemed in the studio a heroic figure of a
sunworshipper with upraised arms, became strangely miniature when silhouetted
against the iron knees of Mount Overlook. Ruefully Fite admits that the
sunworshipper must come down; it just doesn’t possess the necessary dimensions
to stand exposed under the blue canopy of the sky.

But with subsequent pieces Fite has been more successful.
The landscape has forced him to expand his ideas of magnitude and he now
composes with all outdoors in mind.

Hardy though he is, Fite could not live outdoors through the
severe New York winters. He had to have shelter, and with characteristic
ingenuity set about building a structure worthy to stand on the fringe of his
Acropolis. He found an old barn in a nearby field, made a deal with its owner,
took the barn apart timber by timber and hauled it to the rim of his glorified
quarry dump. He pulled the old nails from the barn timbers, pounded them straight
and began building a combined workshop and temporary gallery for sculptural pieces
he had already completed. In a two months vacation from Bard, where he teaches
part-time, he flung up the skeleton of the building, roofed it tight, then
turned again to his bluestone dream.

Summer and winter the project of the bluestone Acropolis
goes forward., Thus far, only a single acre has been retrieved from chaos; in
his mind Fite carries blueprints for the development of the remaining eleven
acres. It is really a frightening undertaking. With the plan still in its
infancy, Fite has been accused of trying to emulate Pharoah and his ten
thousand slaves in one lifetime. But this young sculptor, just 40, has no touch
of megalomania. He is well aware that the endurance of one man may be insufficient
to complete the work, and is looking for other young men to assist him in his
task of exploiting bluestone's loveliness. Part time helpers from Bard College
occasionally lend a hand. Fite's hope is to establish a permanent school in
which young American sculptors can carve native rock under his direction.

The terraces and pedestals of the bluestone Acropolis are
open to the work of any sculptor who can create a stone worthy of a place
there. And to assist those needier than himself, Fite has established out of
his meager funds the Bluestone Fellowship which will be awarded for the first
time this year.

Fite occasionally exchanges a day's work on nearby farms for
milk, eggs or a little cash. The sale of a carving to a museum or private
collector, sometimes brings in a lump sum of money which is carefully
husbanded. His teaching job at Bard College pays him a small salary --
three-fourths of which he plows back into his bluestone project.

The Fellowship is within his modest means, since it provides
only tuition and lodging in a neat shack adjoining the quarry. The recipient
(preference will be given to a war veteran) will have to forage for his own
food.

Harvey Fite, though not a big man, is tremendously strong --
not muscle-bound despite his bulging biceps and extensors, but graceful in his
carriage and movements (he is one of the best square dancers in the country and
formerly earned a little money by giving exhibitions of country dancing with an
organization known as the "Cheats and Swings. ") Exposure to the
elements has bronzed his skin; his flesh tones and bone structure give him some
resemblance to an Indian. His hands have callouses though as an armadillo.

Until recently a bachelor, Flte has now complicated his
economic existence by taking a wife. This romantic step obliges him to work
harder than ever; he is now on a hard and fast schedule of seven hours a day
with mallet and chisel preparing for an exhibition of his sculpture this
summer. He works the whole seven hours without stopping for food.

Fite's Acropolis is strictly non-commercial. He will not
sell a foot of his ground and no amount of money would tempt him to exhibit a
piece of statuary he didn't think worthy of a spot. He has twisted stubborn
beauty out of the most recalcitrant stone, only because he is more stubborn
than the stone itself. And he has transformed a quarry-dump into a minor wonder
of the world because he had the vision to see beauty where others saw only a
heap of ugly debris.

Harvey Fite’s work will be open to public inspection for the
first time this summer.

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About Me

I'm a poet, novelist, all-purpose writer, teacher, husband, father and grandfather. My stepfather, Harvey Fite, created the sculptural masterpiece Opus 40, and I live on the grounds and take care of it.